Boost sales tax? Gregoire cites GOP predecessors

Addressing 17,000 listeners on an AARP call-in town hall, Gov. Chris Gregoire evoked the state’s last Republican governor in arguing for a temporary, half-cent increase in the state sales tax.

Gregoire

“Do you know when the sales tax was last increased?” Gregoire asked. “It was 1983: We were in the greatest recession until now. We had a Democratic Legislature and a Republican governor, my friend John Spellman.

“They raised it over a penny, 1.1 cents. They just could not see an all-cuts budget.”

Gregoire fielded queries left and right over the phone from retirees around the state.

A woman named Evelyn asked how much the half-cent, three year increase would raise toward fending off cuts in public safety, education and aid to the vulnerable: $494 million, Gregoire told her.

“Why in the hell? Excuse me, why don’t we do a penny instead of a half-cent?” Evelyn asked the governor.

“I’d love to go to a penny,” Gregoire said. But she cited what the state’s small businesses are going through in the Great Recession, and gave the answer: “Not in such tough times.”

The state has closed three prisons, argued the governor. It has shut down a juvenile correction facility. Washington has 2,000 fewer state employees than when it had one million less people.

“We’re not Wisconsin: We don’t have rioting out here,” argued Gregoire, “but we got more concessions out here at the bargaining table than they imposed there.”

A caller from the San Juan Islands asked Gregoire why the state isn’t looking again at an income tax on high earners, or again putting a tax on soda pop. An income tax initiative was rejected in 2010, and voters rolled back the beverage tax after a $16.9 million ad campaign by the American Beverage Assn.

“The Legislature will not revisit that issue,” said Gregoire.

The governor showed an intensity that has been lacking of late, warning that the state is on the verge of “shredding the safety net,” and that tuition increases are “getting the middle class out of the opportunities for higher education.”

Is the sales tax regressive? “It is,” said Gregoire. “But you know what I think is regressive? It is regressive when we shred the safety not. It is regressive when we shred services to our communities. It is regressive when we shred our education system.”